Time Management for Salespeople

Of all the resources you have to work with as a sales professional, time is your most valuable and your most volatile. Time is a precious commodity and should be treated with respect and care. Time is easily wasted or squandered. How you deal with time may well mean the difference between mediocrity or success in your professional career. The decision is yours.

A Bad Mix

Unfortunately salespeople and time management go together about as well as oil and water — they just don’t mix. It’s not that we don’t want to be better time managers, it’s just not in our genes. I suspect our inability to embrace time management techniques is a birth defect that afflicts most dynamic salespeople. Fortunately, being genetically disorganized is not terminal and there are things we can do to improve our ability to get more done in less time and with less resources than most other mortals.

TimeAir

Think of time as being like a seat on an airliner. Every aircraft that takes off with an empty seat means lost revenue and lost opportunity to the airline. By the same token, every day that passes with empty or unproductive hours is lost revenue or lost opportunity for you. Just like the airline can’t fill the seat that has already left the ground, you can’t fill the hour that has just past.

Whether you want to maximize your selling opportunities or simply fine‑tune yourself for top personal performance, it’s obvious that you must efficiently manage your available time. To do this requires the ability, desire, and discipline to plan, organize, and prioritize properly.

Successful salespeople are the ones who make the best use of their time, are the most organized, and struggle to stay organized each day.